No one should be confused by the calendar, Crimean Tatar commentator Ayder Muzhdabayev says. The coming year will be a reprise of the horrors of 1939 because Vladimir Putin will move to absorb Belarus, expand his war against Ukraine, and use terrorist acts to promote a Russian presence in the Baltic region.

Soon, Muzhdabayev says, “everything will become clear: a common hymn, coat of arms, flag, and president (tsar)” in addition to “the common borders and common security and intelligence institutions which already exist.” For Putin, the Belarusians don’t exist as a separate people just as for Hitler, the Austrians did not.

And those who fail to see the direction Putin is driving toward and who believe that Lukashenka will resist completely fail to see that the Russian “fuehrer needs ‘a reborn Union’ as air; this was always clear; but with the annexation of Crimea, it became a100 percent certainty,” Muzhdabayev says.

Those who are paying attention certainly recognize that the recent release of a Levada Center poll showing 66 percent of Russians as nostalgic for the USSR was “no accident.” It sent exactly the message that the Kremlin wants sent.

And there is another compelling reason for assuming that things will continue to deteriorate, the commentator continues. As close analysts of Russia should know, “always predict the worse and you’ll be right. This rule has never failed me,” Muzhdabayev says. And things aren’t going to end with Belarus.

Putin will seek a Russian military presence in the Baltic Sea to “defend” North Stream 1 and he will expand his military actions against Ukraine. At the present time, “Ukraine is the only country which is seriously opposing the Reich.” It must continue its build up and not think that it will avoid a major war.

For Ukraine, because of Russia, “war is inevitable and obligatory. If we will resist, the West will be forced to help us and itself. Otherwise it won’t wake up” until it is too late, Muzhdabayev says. Ukraine can’t avoid this war and should focus on building up its strength, sacrificing anything that gets in the way of defeating the invader.

“Martial law should not be dropped but made tougher, elections should be held only if the entire military-political situation is under control. If it isn’t, then elections should be sacrificed. The country and each and every one of us must survive.” Everything else is secondary in the battle against the Russian Reich.

Ukraine’s “enemy is unprincipled, tactically unpredictable and treacherous,” Muzhdabayev says. “It won’t give us any excuses. Therefore, we must be prepared for everything, on both the real and hybrid front.” And we must remember that the year ahead will be more like 1939 than any recent one.